Geometry Working Group

Tuesday, July 17

Philip filmed the first run-through of the lessons that the geometry sub-groups
are planning to create. Unwitting (or is that witlessly....) the groups are
divided along gender lines. Peg is playing Devil's Advocate for both groups.

The
men (Tim Giesbrecht, Christian Jensen, and Troy Jones) presented a run through
of their lesson which will be a fascinating combination of hands-on physics and
geometry featuring very clever home-made manipulatives. The topic will
eventually be narrowed but for now, great questions came up about the balance
points of polygons when weights are at the vertices, or along the edges, or
evenly distributed throughout the shape.The group will have experiments with
connections to Sketchpad.

The second group (Joyce Frost and Kris Koch)
is writing up a lesson focusing on the mathematics involved in one of the
polyhedra that pack space, namely the rhombic dodecahedron. The lessons will
attempt to teach vocabulary, find lengths, areas, volumes, dissect the shape
into various congruent polyhedra, and give an excuse to create some fascinating
puzzles from tag board and contact paper.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0314808 and Grant No. ESI-0554309. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.